Posted on October 28, 2022

Virginia Military Institute Went Woke, Enrollment Fell 25%

Daniel Greenfield, Gatestone Institute, October 27, 2022

The Virginia Military Institute is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the presence of women at the nation’s oldest state military college with an appearance by Kimberly Dark: a fat rights activist and author of lesbian fanfic who wants to “reimagine masculinity”.

“Why couldn’t we see that America has been racist forever, sexist forever?” Dark ranted in a post titled, “For those who do not want a Trump presidency — this is what we will do now.”

Under Superintendent Cedric Wins, this is what the Virginia Military Institute has become.

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The institution that gave us Patton, Marshall and Byrd now asks about your “gender role”, urges you to reimagine “masculinity” and spews hate toward anyone who happens to be white.

VMI’s Preston Library’s DEI resources features “The History of White People” and “White Guys on Campus” discussing “whiteness” and the “habits of racism among white male undergraduates” along with the racist ravings of Ibram X. Kendi in “How to Be an Antiracist”, Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me”.

The message at VMI is one of undisguised loathing for white people, injecting the ugliest racist concepts of critical race theory directly into the campus dialogue while trying to silence critics.

Superintendent Wins, VMI’s woke head, has been accused of undermining its proud tradition and driving away cadets. His “One Corps, One VMI Unifying Action Plan” puts DEI at the heart of VMI and claims that it will “empower Cadets to gain strength through diversity, acceptance by inclusion”. But the cadets aren’t coming.

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The VMI Inclusive Excellence plan called for pushing “diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice” on students, faculty and alumni. It was based on the One Virginia Plan which declared that “Inequity is rooted in America’s foundation.”

VMI’s Board of Visitors had already hosted a state equity official pushing critical race theory and the hatred toward white people of “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo. A good deal of effort is being spent on eliminating, renaming and “recontextualizing” historical elements of VMI’s legacy. And VMI’s woke personnel are overtly dismissive. {snip}

VMI’s DEI training included “White Like Me: Race, Racism, and White Privilege in America.”

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To see what DEI means, just go to VMI’s DEI resources list assembled by Lt. Col. Ticen and Maj. Carroll that includes Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me” which states that the 9/11 firefighters and police officers “were not human to me” and Ibram X Kendi’s “How To Be an Antiracist” which contends that, “The most threatening racist movement is not the alt right’s unlikely drive for a white ethnostate but the regular American’s drive for a race-neutral one.”

If there’s any ambiguity left about how much the VMI administration loathes and discriminates against white people, there’s a direct link of “anti-racism resources” as a “resource to white people”. Black people and other races, it’s understood, cannot be racist. Only white people.

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